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Rome – The Italian government is investing about €60 million ($74 million) to revamp and relaunch Rome’s Cinecittà Studios, plans for which appear to be gathering steam just a few months after the iconic facility reverted to state ownership.

Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini announced a three-year overhaul that would entail new facilities, an on-site museum, a restoration lab, and a video-game production hub on the backlot where Federico Fellini made his movies and where Hollywood classics such as “Ben Hur” were shot.

“This is the symbolic beginning of the new future for Cinecittà,” Franceschini told reporters Wednesday on the Cinecittà lot. He said that the sprawling studio’s long-gestating relaunch is “part of an [overall] investment that aims to put cinema and the audiovisual industry as a whole at the center of the [economic] development of this country.”

Located on the outskirts of Rome, Cinecittà returned to state ownership last July after languishing for roughly a decade in private hands.

“In the end, do what you love, that’s the secret of life,” Francis Ford Coppola told Anthony Bourdain during the Season 10 finale of the latter’s CNN’s interview series “Parts Unknown.” Bourdain sat down with the legendary filmmaker in Southern Italy at the Palazzo Margherita, a former palace used by officials in Benito Mussolini’s National Fascist Party. The men swapped personal stories while dining on a five-course meal, and Coppola got reflective when asked about regrets.

“I didn’t want to be one of those old guys who are like, ‘Oh I wish I had done that, I wish I had done this,'” Coppla told Bourdain. “I can honestly say I got to do this, I got to do that, I got to make movies, I got to take big chances with the movies,

Netflix has ordered its third Italian original production. The new eight-episode drama Baby is inspired by the real-life Baby Squillo scandal, a teen prostitution racket that implicated politicians, lawyers and businessmen, including the husband of Benito Mussolini's granddaughter.

The Baby Squillo scandal took place in the upscale Roman neighborhood of Parioli in 2013. High school girls from wealthy families began to offer sexual services in exchange for spending money for cellphones and luxury goods.

Baby is described as a fictional coming-of-age story that follows a group of Parioli teenagers in their quest to defy societal norms. The show will be brought...

Harvey Weinstein is reportedly on the verge of joining a small club of disgraced public figures who have been stripped of their honorary British titles and decorations.

Following the mogul’s recent sexual assault and harassment scandal, the British government’s Honors Forfeiture Committee is actively considering removing his Cbe, an honorary title that stands for Commander of the Order of the British Empire, according to the BBC.

Weinstein received the title, which is one step down from a knighthood, from Queen Elizabeth II in 2004 for his contribution to the British film industry.

Best-selling author Robert Harris is having another of his novels adapted for the screen.

FremantleMedia has signed a deal with the British writer to give his his latest book Munich — which was released in September — the high-end TV drama treatment. The international co-production between Fremantle's Euston Films and Ufa Fiction will be shot in the U.K. and Germany.

A spy-thriller set in the days leading up to WWII as the British government tried to negotiate peace with Germany, Munich features real-life characters — including Adolf Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, Benito Mussolini and Edouard Daladier — and spins a story...

With all due respect to Christopher Nolan, no filmmaker has captured the evacuation of Dunkirk better than Joe Wright, who evoked the sheer scale of England’s finest hour via a five-minute tracking shot in “Atonement.” Now, with “Darkest Hour,” Wright returns to show the other side of the operation. Set during the crucial first days of Winston Churchill’s term as prime minster, this talky, yet stunningly cinematic history lesson balances the great orator’s public triumphs with more vulnerable private moments of self-doubt, elevating the inner workings of British government into a compelling piece of populist entertainment.

Whereas Nolan’s “Dunkirk” so thrillingly illustrated the military rescue at Dunkirk, all but banishing Churchill to a newspaper article read aloud at the end of the film, “Darkest Hour” spends nearly every scene at the prime minister’s side — except for the first couple, during which Churchill is dramatically absent, represented

After nine years of private ownership failed to return Rome’s Cinecitta Studios to its prior glory, the state is taking back ownership of the Italian film compound.

The government-controlled Luce-Cinecitta Institute confirmed Monday its acquisition of the historical complex originally made famous by Federico Fellini. Cinecitta's previous owners tried to lure big Hollywood productions to the Italian backlot, but had little success beyond a handful of box-office bombs including Ben-Hur and Zoolander 2. The studio did notch up a few high-profile TV shoots, though, including HBO's The Young Pope and Sky's Diabolik.

Rome – Italy’s iconic Cinecittà Studios, where “Ben-Hur” and other classics were filmed, is returning to state ownership after nearly a decade in private hands, with a planned revamp involving the construction of two new soundstages on the studios’ backlot.

Italian state entity Istituto Luce-Cinecittà has reached an agreement to buy out the private consortium that was running the facility once known as “Hollywood on the Tiber.” Privatization of the sprawling studios on Rome’s outskirts was completed in 2008, after having begun a year earlier under the government of former conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

The consortium, which includes producer Aurelio De Laurentiis, Italian Entertainment Group and fashion mogul Diego Della Valle, had taken a majority stake in the complex founded by Benito Mussolini in 1937. Hollywood swords-and-sandals epics such as “Ben-Hur” and “Quo Vadis” were shot there during Cinecittà’s heyday in the 1950s.

The Queen may be Great Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, but there’s another woman who forever changed the country’s monarchy: Wallis Simpson.

The American-born Duchess of Windsor, who died this week in 1986, is the reason Queen Elizabeth eventually took the throne. As any fan of The Crown could tell you, Simpson’s eventual husband, King Edward VIII, gave up the throne after less than a year because his family (and parliament) wouldn’t accept Simpson, the woman he loved (and a two-time divorcée) as Queen.

Edward’s abdication (after which he was known as the Duke of Windsor) put his brother,

Rome – As Europe’s neo-fascists re-emerge and right-wing populism sweeps through the West, a documentary about a black Italian boxer who discredited Benito Mussolini’s racist ideology by winning a European boxing title is making a splash in Italy and abroad.

“The Duce’s Boxer” tells the story of Leone Jacovacci, an African Italian born in the Congo who won the 1928 European middleweight title by beating Mario Bosisio a white Italian boxer favored by the country’s Fascist leaders, in front of 40,000 fans in Rome’s National Stadium.

An infuriated Mussolini then ordered Jacovacci and his achievement erased from Italy’s history books. But 89 years later, Jacovacci’s story has resurfaced, with “The Duce’s Boxer” premiering Tuesday in 25 Italian cities to mark the U.N. International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Based on the book “Black Roman” by Italian sociologist Mauro Valeri, a former head of the country’s National Xenophobia Observatory,

Members of the film community are coming out of the woodwork to band together and push back on the repression that is anticipated to come out of the incoming Trump administration. From documentarians reaffirming their commitment to exposing hidden truths to narrative filmmakers pledging to combat racism with their work, many are planning a strong response to the 2016 presidential election.

Read More: President Donald Trump: How the Indie Film World Will Respond

The Film Society of Lincoln Center assembled some of those voices Wednesday by convening an “urgent conversation” with Film Quarterly entitled “Film & Media in a Time of Repression.” Moderated by Film Quarterly editor and Uc Santa Cruz professor Ruby Rich, the event featured speakers including “House of Cards” creator Beau Willimon, blacklisted screenwriter Walter Bernstein and Portugese documentary filmmaker Susana de Sousa Dias. Here are some of the highlights from the discussion, which outlined some key points

Before you dismiss President-elect Donald Trump’s latest Twitter tirade against Alec Baldwin, consider the actor’s response to the soon-to-be world leader. Trump called Baldwin’s now famous impersonation of him “sad” on Saturday night, saying on Twitter that the actor’s bit on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” “just can’t get any worse.” Also Read: Donald Trump Seethes on Twitter While Watching 'SNL' Live To that, Baldwin responded: …@realDonaldTrump Release your tax returns and I’ll stop. Ha – ABFoundation (@ABFalecbaldwin) December 4, 2016 But the actor also retweeted a link to an August article from The Atlantic

Only slightly more compelling than those stiffly staged dramatic reenactments that alternate with talking-heads commentary in second-rate cable-tv docudramas, “Finding Altamira” relies heavily on the dynamic underplaying of Antonio Banderas to sustain interest during a respectful yet unexciting slog through an obscure historical episode. Director by Hugh Hudson (“Chariots of Fire” … but, on the other hand, “Revolution”) attempts to imbue this attractively mounted period piece with the sort of socially-conscious gravity that was a hallmark of Stanley Kramer’s “prestige pictures” of the 1950s and ’60s. Unfortunately, Hudson also peppers his film — which details the remarkable 1879 unearthing of cave paintings dating back to the Paleolithic Era in Cantabria, Spain — with fantasy sequences involving the bison represented in those paintings. Quite inadvertently, these scenes, meant to be the product of a precocious child’s imagination, come off as not entirely unwelcome comic relief.

Most people would be hard-pressed to think of positive things to say about reviled dictators like Saddam Hussein, Benito Mussolini and Kim Jong-un - but for Donald Trump, it's apparently not a problem. During a campaign event in Raleigh, North Carolina, Tuesday evening, the presumptive Gop nominee praised late Iraqi dictator Hussein for being "so good" at killing terrorists. "He was a bad guy, really bad guy. But you know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good. They didn't read them the rights - they didn't talk, they were a terrorist, it was over. Today,

He made a documentary about architecture in Nazi Germany and followed the Stalinist heritage trail. For his latest BBC4 film, Jonathan Meades is turning his camera towards Il Duce – one fascist monument at a time

“After Jerry and Joe” was the cryptic subject line of the email from Jonathan Meades to promote his latest documentary. “The third and final piece on dictators’ architecture,” read the body of the message, followed succinctly by Meades’s address: Cité Radieuse le Corbusier, Marseille.

A man who resides in Corb’s “machine for living in” understandably has some interest in the architecture of dictators. It’s a subject that has occupied Meades for the last 20 years. Having covered the architecture of Nazi Germany in Jerry-Building (1994), followed by the Stalinist heritage trail of Joe-Building (2006), the besuited, bespectacled critic is back with a documentary about his third and final tyrant, Benito Mussolini.

“If I were to run, I’d run as a Republican. They’re the dumbest group of voters in the

country. They love anything on Fox News. I could lie and they’d still eat it up. I bet my

my numbers would be terrific.” – Donald Trump, People Magazine, 1998

“It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” – Benito Mussolini

Perhaps this is “bad business,” but before you do anything else, I want all of you to go over to Michael Davis World – yes, that Michael Davis, who happens to be my loooong time friend and fellow ComicMix columnist – and read Martha Thomases’s latest piece, entitled “Trump Card.” Then sit and think. Then read it again.

Then be afraid. Be very afraid.

I know I don’t often get political – oh, c’mon, who the hell do I think I’m kidding? – but

Donald Trump recently retweeted a quote that is attributed to Benito Mussolini and stands by the sentiment of the words that were uttered by the Italian Fascist leader. Donald Trump Retweets Mussolini Quote Members of Gawker’s editorial team, aware of Trump’s tough rhetoric as well as his propensity to retweet what he sees as praise, devised a […]

The post Donald Trump Retweets Quote Attributed To Mussolini, Defends The Gaffe appeared first on uInterview.

Will history repeat itself? Hitler comedy “Look Who’s Back,” which did gangbusters biz in Germany, is set for an Italian remake that will reimagine Benito Mussolini’s return in present-day Italy.

Expanding Italo film and TV shingle Indiana Production has optioned Italian-language remake rights from German producers Mythos Film and Constantin Film to the hit political satire directed by David Wnendt in which Hitler wakes up in contempo Berlin with no memory of any event post-1945, and ends up getting his own TV show.

Partly shot amid ordinary Teutons instead of thesps, this Borat-like docu style pic earned more than $21 million in Germany last year, becoming the country’s second-highest-grossing home-grown hit. Netflix will be distributing it worldwide with the exception of the German-speaking countries and a few selected other territories,

In an ideal world, every filmmaker would live long enough to see the premiere of their final film, even if their life is ended sooner than expected. It’s one thing to experience shooting the film and editing the final product, but it is another thing entirely to witness your creation with an audience seeing it for the first time. Pier Paolo Pasolini is one such director who never witnessed his final film in the company of an audience. 20 days before the premiere of Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom at the 1975 Paris Film Festival, an unknown assailant, or group of assailants, murdered Pasolini. A well-known provocateur in film and the political arena, Pasolini unknowingly saved his most controversial work for last.

Salò is a notorious adaptation of the Marquis de Sade’s equally infamous novel The 120 Days of Sodom. In Pasolini’s film, however, the novel’s four wealthy,

A testament to the importance of restoration, the new digital transfer of Ettore Scola’s 1977 title A Special Day is a beauty to behold. Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, it went on to collect a number of accolades, winning a Golden Globe and a Cesar for Best Foreign Film, and scoring Marcello Mastroianni an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Scola is one of the great Italian auteurs who hasn’t received the same international renown as Fellini, Pasolini, Petri, and others, all considerable forces by the time Scola’s career was taking off in the early 1970s. He’s played in competition at Cannes eight times (winning Best Director in 1976 for Ugly, Dirty and Bad and Best Screenplay in 1980 for La Terrazza), and his most recent film, 2013’s How Strange to Be Named Federico was a playful homage to Scola’s friend, Fellini. In 2014, Criterion restored his 1962 title Il Sorpasso,

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